The use of syringes is pervasive in medical care. Drugs, therapies, medicaments, or other substances may be administered to, and/or prepared for, patients using syringes. In this regard, most syringes include graduation marks that assist in measurement of the volume of fluid drawn into a syringe.
Given the pervasiveness of syringes, pharmacies often prepare a large number of syringes for use in the provision of medical care. Pharmacy technicians or other individuals tasked with preparation of medical treatments often use syringes. The syringes may be used during preparation (e.g., as an intermediate prior to injecting syringe contents into another receptacle) or may be used as administration receptacles into which substances are drawn. In any regard, pharmacies may produce large quantities of syringes for use in administration of medical care.
As such, prior approaches have been proposed that include automated syringe fillers that allow for automation of syringe filling. These approaches have ranged widely in specific approaches used to fill a syringe. These proposed approaches to automated syringe filling often rely on volumetric or gravimetric analysis to determine an amount of fluid that is drawn into a syringe. Also, such automated approaches often required predefined syringe characteristics for handling, filling, or other processing in the automated filler. In this regard, the applicability of the syringe fillers may be limited. For instance, prior approaches to automated syringe filling may be limited with respect to the nature of syringes that may be used with a given filler such that only a given size, type, or syringes manufactured by a given provider may be used in the filler. Accordingly, while automated syringe filling may provide advantages over manual preparation of syringes (e.g., increased efficiency, higher throughput, more accuracy, etc.), such devices continue to have limitations that inhibit their usefulness.